# British / American Spellings

The CABI Digital Library search functionality automatically finds British/American spelling variants across all content fields and full text, with the exception of the Keyword/Index fields where it looks for precise matches of spelling. 

{% hint style="info" %}
To look up the precise word or spelling variant of CABI’s index terms please use the [CABI Thesaurus](https://www.cabi.org/cabithesaurus/). 
{% endhint %}

A dedicated English dictionary is used to tackle the variations on word spelling caused by differences found among English speaking countries, and by alternative spellings within the same country.\
The varcon (Variant Conversion Info) lexicon is used to enhance English handling and it includes spellings in American, British, Canadian, and Australian and also variant spellings within these languages. British – US synonyms cannot be deactivated with double quotes.

Example: if you search for 

> *aa:chile* 

(aa = author affiliation)

The results will also give items with 'chili' in the author affiliation field, because this is considered a synonym of 'chile'. 

For indexing terms, truncation may also be used when searching to ensure that spelling variants are retrieved.

For example search for 

> *colo?r* 

rather than 

> *color* 

to ensure retrieval of any records where the word ‘colour” occurs as part of the index terms, for instance *“colour patterns*” in the descriptor field*.*


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://help.cabi.org/cabi-digital-library-help/search/british-american-spellings.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.